Last week the stars aligned (pardon the pun) for some Milky Way shooting. The night ahead looked clear, from what I could gather from my phalanx of weather Apps, there was a new moon and I had plenty of enthusiasm for the chase... even though it meant getting up at around 1.30am.

I've done a little Night Sky photography in the past, but I've never created any specific goals of capturing the galactic core of the Milky Way. I knew that there was a 'season' during the which the core is visible (February to November, fact fans), but I didn't know where exactly to look, or how to time the shoot. So I did what any good photography geek would do, and dived deep into Photo Pills to meticulously plan the night ahead.

I'd planned to head to Folkestone Warren. The tide was receding and I was confident I could pull off an image with some interesting jetties in the foreground, with the Milky Way arching across the sky. As I drove down the hill into Folkestone at 2.30am, it was such a clear night I could see the lights of the French Coast clearly, and immediately realised there was wayyy too much light pollution here to get a decent capture. I quickly recalibrated and headed off on the 45-minute cross-country drive to Fairfield Church. This is a beautifully remote spot on the Romney Marsh, and somewhere I've shot many times, but I felt like it was the best bet at short notice.

On arrival I noticed it was breezier than I'd expected which created quite a wind chill, and before long my hands were freezing as I fumbled to set up compositions and angles I was happy with. The biggest issue, though, was light pollution. Even though this spot feels right out in the middle of nowhere, there are a few houses nearby, and one of them has a raft of blinding floodlights shining pointlessly into the night sky. What made these lights even more grating was the fact that they were shining right at the very base of the Milky Way, where it was rising in the sky, and it was almost impossible to find an angle where I could successfully obscure them from appearing in the frame. Then there's the light pollution from Ashford, which may be some fifteen miles away, but its lights are glaringly obvious from that distance.

As I started to shoot, I noticed that there was a very subtle amount of super thin high cloud streaking across the sky. It was barely perceptible to the naked eye, but in-camera it was very obvious as it picked up all the ambient light from the neighbouring area. I managed to get a couple of shots that were useable, but next time an opportunity arises to capture the galactic core, I'll be heading to a Dark Sky Area, far from the lights of our bustling world.

As my regular readers will know, I am a student of sunrise. In the last few years, I've routinely woken in the early hours and taken magical mystery trips into the unknown with my camera in hand. But I struggle to recall a morning as saintly as this one.

This was captured on a brutally blustery afternoon after a savage morning spent at Reynisfjara, where 26 foot waves were taking everything in their path, including a couple of hapless photographer dudes.

One morning I was hunting sunrise on the South Kent Coast and I’d decided to take a section of the coast path that was unfamiliar to me. I’d been unable to find a parking spot and eventually just jammed the car into a sketchy lay-by and literally ran for the best part of a mile with my heavy camera pack to try to find a composition in time for the rebirth of the day.

I love how it sits, proud but isolated in a gently rolling field, surrounded by woodland in the shadow of the North Downs.

This was a bit of a renegade (unplanned) shoot, as I’d woken early and decided to head out to see what the light was offering from the top of the hills. If anything I was a little later than I should have been because the best light was quickly evaporating, even though it was still early. I noticed a beautiful streak of pinkness in the sky and knew it would be gone within minutes, so pulled over by the tree, ran into the field and quickly got the shot.

This shot came at the end of an epic, memorable night, spent shivering on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in subzero temperatures.

I was attempting to capture my first proper star trail image, so I had my camera set to shoot every 20 seconds or so at a 20-second exposure. Once you start these shoots, you’re committed to the long game, and committed I was!

There were all kinds of complications, not least the utter stillness and frigidity of the cold night air that insisted on coating the camera lens with a sheen of frost. Once that starts to appear, photos quickly become blurry and opaque, and it’s virtually impossible to remove in between images, so I ended up having to settle for around 100 decent quality images to build my star trail shot with. I’d also barely given a second thought to the rules of composition, that applies just as much at night as they do during the day, so the best I could do was find several skeletal trees as my attempt at foreground.

As light slowly bled into the night sky, a slow reveal began under bluebird skies. Blue hour was slowly subsumed by Golden Hour, and as the sun slowly crested above the dormant peaks, the new day was bathed in glorious magenta tones, the light duelling with the red sandstone of the peaks.

The day after our trip to the Brecon Beacons I woke up absolutely exhausted and a touch demoralised. The weather was stark, grey and mainly overcast so I felt a change of tempo and tone was in order and headed into the heart of Orlestone Forest in Kent to see if I could capture some springlike woodland scenes.

I know this woodland like the back of my hand, having mountain biked and walked my dogs there for many years. This stand of Redwood trees has always been a favourite of mine, but I'd never found the opportunity to shoot them until now. The conditions were perfect, with gentle rays of milky light side-lighting the trunks.

I'm really happy with how this particular shot turned out and will be adding it to the online store shortly.

The Spring Equinox is the perfect time to shift gears and recalibrate. From this moment onwards the sun is rising earlier and earlier and, whilst it might be my favourite time of day to be out with the camera, it becomes less tenable on a regular basis when you're faced with 4 am wake-up calls!

In March the English woodland is alive with green shoots and new growth, as carpets of wild anemones dual with the emerging native bluebells to create a verdant carpet, submerging the muddy browns of winter. It's a period of breathless change.

I'd wanted to capture the carpet of anemones in this particular part of Orlestone Forest for many years, and the conditions were perfect. Woodlands are hard to shoot when there's bright sunlight as it creates too much dynamic range. For the same reason, another thing to avoid is having elements of the sky in your image as they will almost inevitably blow out your highlights and make it impossible to recover any detail in those super bright tones. My strategy (on the image below) was to find a low angle where I could capture the whole sweeping vista without including any brights from the sky. I sat for a while watching rabbits and squirrels dancing in the soft spring light.

Let me set the scene for you. We'd been up to the Photography Show at the NEC in Birmingham the day before and I was keen to use the weekend away as an opportunity to enjoy a rare day or two in the mountains. Rather than heading North from Birmingham, we opted to sample the Brecon Beacons in South Wales, mainly as it was closer to home.

This is a fresh process of an image I captured in mid-Autumn last year. I’ve learnt so much about processing in the past few months that I’m now at a stage where I’ve begun looking at many of my older images with a critical eye, and I’ve been inspired to come back to one of two of them to give them a new lease of life.